Quilts, etc in the Wild

Pillowcase and quilt in the wild
Pillowcase and quilt in the wild

As you from my post the other day, I was in Portland. While there I saw a quilt and a pillowcase in use at my YM’s house. A friend was in town for graduation and she stayed on the couch at his house. Yay! I was thrilled to see him using a pillowcase and a quilt.

This is one reason I make quilts and give them as gifts. To see them in use is a joy.

Quilt Display

How to Display Quilts
How to Display Quilts

We live in a house called a Doelger House. It is split level and very open plan. That means we have a railing in the hall that is open to our living room. After I ran out of space in the Fabric Closet, where I hang quilts, I started draping them over this railing.

Basically the photo shows one area of my house and how we display quilts.

Recently we had dinner guests and they wanted a quilt show. We pulled quilts off of the chairs, couch and rail in our living room and held up many, many quilts.It was really fun to see some quilts I hadn’t pulled out in a long time. It is also always interesting to hear the reaction of people who really don’t sew or make quilts.

My friend, also a law librarian, commented on how different the quilts were and what a lot of creativity was involved. My thought was “if I was allowed to use this creativity to solve problems at work, my library and information services would be way more awesome than they are.” I don’t know where that popped from but it was kind of a revelation. Lesson? Show your quilts to non-quiltmakers!

As  you have seen on this block I make a lot of quilts. I do give some away, but a lot of them just pile up around the house. They get used as nap quilts or TV watching quilts, but mostly they just pile up.

Some of you may think that is a big waste, but making the quilts really keeps me sane and able to live with people.

I actually have at least two quilts that I need to send off as gifts; I just need to spend a little time wrapping and packaging and writing notes. I just haven’t done it yet.

NSGW Quilt

NSGW Quilt
NSGW Quilt

As President of a Board of the NSGW, DH gets around the state quite a bit. He is well trained to take photos of quilts for me. I think he is interested as well when he sees one.  Last weekend he went to Sutter Creek for a meeting at the Amador Parlor Native Sons hall. In that hall he saw this quilt.

It is a crazy quilt and is made from ribbons from various Native Sons events.

He said there were no blocks, per se, and, yes, he does know what a block is, but I can see a kind of Dresden Plate in there as well as a fan.

NSGW Quilt detail
NSGW Quilt detail

These photos are taken with his cell phone, but you can see the detail of the ribbons in the detail photo.

Bye Bye House & Garden!

House & Garden, finished May 16, 2009

House & Garden, finished May 16, 2009

A friend and former colleague, Sheila, emailed me in her capacity as secretary for the South Asian Bar Association of Northern California Foundation and asked me if I might have a piece to donate for the silent auction at their annual gala, which was held yesterday at the Green Room in San Francisco. A large number of attorneys and other professionals will attend and bid on various items and services at the silent auction. Sheila told me that the items and services were donated by prominent individuals and businesses. All proceeds raised fund public interest fellowships for Bay Area law students.

While I don’t really think that the world needs more lawyers, I do think that scholarships are important and it isn’t up to me to decide how people spend their lives. It also made me feel good to be considered a “prominent individual.” It will be interesting to see where House and Garden goes on its journey.

Modern Quilt Guild

I found this guild via FB. I liked the site, because it pointed me right away to a local group. The local group has a Ning with photos, discussions. I joined right away and found that people are trying to organize meetings in my area. YAY!

Check out the site and see if there is a group in your area.

clipped from themodernquiltguild.com

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Member Guild Links – Sign up on their page if you’d like to join!

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Showing Off, pt.2

Yesterday, I wrote half a post for you as I got called away to do boring stuff.

Spiky Stars
Spiky Stars

For a long time, at least 4 years, Spiky Stars hung on my office wall. I love this quilt. It is one of my, if not my absolute, favorite(s). I made it using a technique I learned and modified in a Doreen Speckman class in the mid-nineties called Interlocking Triangles. She never did anything with this technique, probably because it is pretty labor intensive. I used templates to make this quilt and a lot of the patches are on the bias. I have a lot of designs to make additional quilts in this series. They just haven’t made it to the top of the list yet.

Seeing Red
Seeing Red

Seeing Red now graces my office wall. It is also a bullseye quilt. It started out as a round robin block exercise with Julie Zaccone Stiller and Adrienne Acoba. The exercise was inspired by a different bullseye project done by the Quilt Mavericks quilt group. We sent each other squares of red fabric and proceeded to add circles to them in the bullseye pattern. The interesting thing about this pattern is the way one can play with color. It is interesting to see the colors change as additional layers of fabric are added. When the blocks were complete, we cut the squares up and kept some of each block and sent other parts to the others, so the quilts are truly ‘sister’ quilts. The arrangement of the blocks is my own design. Julie and Adrienne arranged their blocks differently. Colleen Granger did a masterful job quilting Seeing Red. The project, as I mentioned yesterday, has expanded to the point where we are working on creating a bullseye quilt for each of the rainbow colors. Feelin’ Blue was the next in the series and, again, as I mentioned yesterday, Purple Passion is in process.

Seeing Red in context
Seeing Red in context

We actually hung the quilt twice. The first time, it was much higher up. We were outside my office (there is a glass wall in the front) looking at it when one of the name partners walked by. We must have looked odd, because he stopped and looked and told us it should be lower. He was right! We moved it down out of the shadow of the sofit (sp??) and I think it looks better.

One of the good things about putting up a new quilt is that I am actually seeing it. I had gotten to the point, I realized later, of not even seeing Spiky Stars anymore. I need to remember that and change the quilts out more often.

Seeing Red is a much smaller quilt than Spiky Stars, so it startles me a bit when I walk into my office. There is just a lot less fabric and a lot more wall. I don’t know if I will keep Seeing Red up, but it will be there for at least a week. Nobody has commented yet, but I will be interested to see who notices and what they say.

Showing Off

I am racing to get you some content before I head off for, essentially, a week and half of work travel, and (YAY!!) vacation. I won’t be able, probably, to post much during the work travel as I will be in a conference all day and then enjoying good food and drink with friends. We’ll see how the Internet connection is in the conference center this year. Perhaps I’ll be able to post some clips.

I have been thinking of viewing artworks in every day life and surrounding myself with artworks, lately. I looked at the back wall of my office this week and said to myself  “huh! that quilt has been there for 4 years; time for a change.” Then I went into my Assistant Librarian’s office, saw two more quilts and decided that one of them also needed to be changed out.

Feelin' Blue, Too
Feelin’ Blue, Too

This quilt has been on her wall for awhile and she really likes it. She says it has a calming effect on her. It is the second in a series of quilts in the JAJ Bullseye Project. In each round, the three quiltmakers,  Julie Zaccone Stiller, Adrienne Acoba and I each makes one quilt in the agreed upon color scheme. In this case, blue. This quilt was shown at 2005 Marin Quilt & Needle Arts Show.

You can read more about how to make a bullseye quilt here. I am sure there are other directions on the web and in books. You can also see my most recent attempt, a quilt top (not a quilt yet), in the series here.

Feelin' Blue, on display
Feelin’ Blue, on display

This is the quilt on display in my A.L.’s office. You get to see the trappings of our (well, her in this case) work. I could have cropped them out, but thought you might enjoy the quilt in context.

FOTY 2008, on display
FOTY 2008, on display

Here is the full view of FOTY 2008 (although I think you have seen it 12 times in the past 2 weeks, right?)  hanging in my A.L.’s office. She has a much bigger office than I do, and I have my degrees hanging on the only other available wall for art, so she gets two quilts and I get one.

FOTY 2008 in context
FOTY 2008 in context

Here is the quilt in context. I don’t know why it didn’t occur to me to change out the quilts sooner, but it didn’t. My quilts were rejected for display in the public parts of the office, because the Art Committee couldn’t get past the ‘craft.’ Instead they chose some baby puke brown paintings that I wouldn’t hang on my street much less in my house. I am probably bitter and don’t understand the concept. 😉 Now the quilts are up on walls I control and on display for all to view. I am happy.

I have to run off and do some stuff, like laundry, so I will post the quilt in my office later or tomorrow.